Not living up to the billing: Why are audiences staying away from cinemas?
The Oscar nominations are out but cinematic releases from the Best Picture category have mostly bombed. James Moore takes a closer look at why film lovers are yet to return to movie theatres
Nobody knows anything,” said the late William Goldman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. If that was true when Goldman wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade in the 1990s, it is doubly so now. The Oscar nominations are out and there’s one thing that stands out about the majority of the Best Picture contenders: the ones given full cinematic releases have mostly bombed.
West Side Story, Steven Spielberg’s sumptuous remake of the hit musical, is still in a few cinemas after more than two months on release but it has yet to make back its reported $100m budget, per Box Office Mojo, despite having been granted a 45-day cinematic window, which is longer than many get in the post-Covid world.
King Richard, the sports biopic starring the usually bankable Will Smith as the father of Venus and Serena Williams, the tennis-playing prodigies, is similarly underwater. Ditto Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, although it too continues to do steady business on these shores after United Artists looked at what was happening to similar mid-budget films and decided to go for a slow-burn distribution strategy, limiting the number of screens it was initially made available to in an attempt to build buzz. It has borne some fruit and led to an extended spell in the charts.
Nightmare Alley, the work of another A-list director, Guillermo Del Toro? Same again. Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is some people’s idea of the winner, although it almost sank without trace at the US box office. It should be said that this one has been a roaring success in the UK, entering the charts at No 2, as one might expect given where the narrative takes place, and generating returns of close to £10m at the time of writing.
Awards contenders tend to be filed under “films for grown-ups”; dramas that tend to be popular with older cinemagoers. The good ones have historically been able to count on a shot in the arm through the cachet and publicity that comes from bringing home a statuette or two in high-profile categories. All of the above could surely use the help. But will they get it?
The Oscars used to be a US TV staple. But in the streaming era, the ratings have been on a downward trend. A thumbs-up from the Academy might not be enough to tempt audiences this time around, especially those in the older demographics most at risk from Covid. So what does this mean for the future of the sort of movie that traditionally finds itself beaming in the awards’ spotlight at this time of year? Or at least the cinematic future?
“The number of non-genre adult dramas that have cracked $50m is zero. The world of 2019, in which 1917 made $160m, Ford v Ferrari made $120m, and Parasite made $52m, is gone,” tweeted Mark Harris, the writer and film journalist, referencing the 92nd Oscars’ Best Picture (Parasite) and two of its high-profile, and high-grossing, rivals.
“If the pandemic ends, we can talk about what the theatrical movie business might become. But right now, it’s action/Marvel/hero/children’s franchises. And that’s it.”
The numbers bear out Harris’s stark assessment. It should be said that even mega-budget franchise outings couldn’t entirely escape Covid’s malign influence on the box office. Excluding the phenomenon that was Spider-Man: No Way Home – it has racked up $1.7bn globally, which is good for sixth place in the all-time rankings let alone the Covid-affected 2021 chart – they’ve had to settle for less than they might have hoped for in the past.
In 2019 nine films topped $1bn. In 2021, Tom Holland’s third solo outing as Spidey was the only title to achieve that feat. A pair of Chinese films (The Battle of Lake Changjin and Hi, Mom), which barely registered in the west, were placed second and third in the rankings of global gross with No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond, in fourth. The latter wasn’t able to repeat the performance of Skyfall or even Spectre (globally) but was still the third-highest grossing film of all time in the UK.
Top 10 films in UK & Ireland in 2021
Data from 1 January 2021 to 6 January 2022 (Comscore)
1. No Time to Die (Universal): £96.5m
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home (Sony): £74.8m – still on release
3. Dune (Warner Bros): £21.8m
4. Shang Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings (Disney): £21.2m
5. Peter Rabbit 2 (Sony): £20.4m
6. Black Widow (Disney): £18.8m
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony): £18.0m
8. Free Guy (Disney): £16.8m
9. Fast & Furious 9 (Universal): £16.4m
10. Eternals (Disney): £14.8m
Bearing in mind the pandemic, and streaming, those numbers are fine. They show that spectacle still sells, and franchises still sell. And it clearly helps if you have a good movie.
Dune, perhaps a sci-fi blockbuster for grown-ups if such a thing exists, a Best Picture contender and probably a shoo-in for some technical category love, is an interesting anomaly. It made nearly $400m on a $165m budget, which probably puts it in the red after marketing costs are considered. But it was controversially and simultaneously released for streaming via HBO Max in the US for a month-long window at the same time as its release in theatres, before being withdrawn from the channel ahead of a more normal home-media release. Or re-release.
Its performance was good enough for part two to be given the green light. As Harris pointed out, it’s in the middle tier where the real issues lay. Is the future a streamed one?
The bookies’ odds-on favourite for Best Picture is Netflix’s Power of the Dog. While it faces stiff competition from Belfast (between 2-1 and 3-1 in a volatile market) and West Side Story (available at roughly twice the price) in that category, Jane Campion has all but been handed a statuette by William Hill, which has her at 1-10 to take home the best director honours.
Netflix also picked up nods in various categories for The Lost Daughter, tick, tick...BOOM! and Don’t Look Up, sneered at by critics but loved by subscribers. Other streamer films jockeying for the attention of voters include Apple’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, CODA, and Amazon’s Being the Ricardos.
Four of the five nominations for Best Actor were for work done on primarily streaming films: Benedict Cumberbatch for Dog, Denzel Washington for Macbeth, Andrew Garfield for Tick Tick… and Javier Bardem for Ricardos. The odd one out? Smith.
We’re in a different world to the one three years ago when Spielberg infamously said Netflix, which gives its films only limited theatrical runs, produced movies primarily for TV viewing and should only contend for the Emmys. The pandemic is only partly to blame for that, having accelerated pre-existing trends.
One thing we do know with absolute certainty: nobody is quite sure how to navigate its aftermath.
“Goldman’s is an oven-ready quote that could be permanently applied to our business,” says Ben Luxford, head of audience for the British Film Institute. “Right now there is a lot of hypothesising going on. There needs to be. This is a market like nobody has seen before.”
What hasn’t changed, Luxford points out, is that the box office is a marketplace still “incredibly reliant on a small number of films”. Since the UK reopened its cinemas, more than 500 have been released, most of which have produced ticket sales that would barely serve as rounding errors on the overall numbers of a Bond or a Spidey.
However, he says, there are “results that we can look on positively”, referencing the boost Licorice Pizza has received through word of mouth; people who have seen it are raving about it and recommending it to their friends.
“We’ve also seen Boiling Point do very well,” he says of the remarkable British thriller set in a busy restaurant and filmed in a single take. “It was released simultaneously on VOD and in cinemas and grew week-to-week. For that to happen in a depressed market is exceptional.”
Maybe it just takes the right film. Maybe this year’s Oscar contenders that made it to the silver screen aren’t all that. West Side Story is, after all, a remake, and a musical. That’s a genre that has had a spotty record. Both In the Heights or Dear Evan Hanson were similarly snubbed by audiences.
King Richard is a biopic, with its focus on the father as much as his pair of tennis playing champion daughters. Will Smith’s character is much less well known to the wider public than they are. Nightmare Alley? Licorice Pizza? Well, maybe audiences have just missed a trick. Maybe they just don’t know what they’re missing.
Jason Wood, creative director for film and culture at Manchester’s HOME cinema, downplays the fears Harris expressed. “Nightmare Alley is finding an audience at the moment,” he says of perhaps the most stylish film of the year so far. “Licorice Pizza has been very successful at independent venues. West Side Story has been a disappointment but films sometimes failing to perform to expectation, and failing to make back their budget, is nothing new. I think UK audiences remain very receptive to the theatrical experience.”
Carol Welch, Odeon’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, says much the same thing from the perspective of one of the nation’s big multiplex chains: “All the evidence says that those people who like content like it in all formats. The change in the industry is about experience, personalisation and convenience. We believe the cinema brings a high-value experience that our guests love, it’s a very immersive, magical experience and we think that it has a very bright future.”
Odeon can’t be accused of a lack of faith in its product, having recently opened an expansively fitted-out new cinema in Leicester Square. No less than Nicole Kidman, a Best Actress nominee for Amazon’s Being the Ricardos, was drafted in to give it a push via a trailer. The company has bet heavily on its premium “Luxe” format, featuring the sort of seating you might find in business class or better if you were to take to the skies but at a still affordable price.
Spider-Man’s performance would suggest that casual fans will also return for the right film
Odeon says it is trying to lure cinephiles, who lean older, with its Spotlight initiative, a curated monthly film club. It seeks to showcase the best indie films and arthouse cinema recommended by the company’s in-house film experts. Licorice Pizza was one of the first beneficiaries.
Those in the trade are, of course, going to put a positive spin on the future of the industry. They have to. But there are hopeful signs for them. The Bond film, for example, retained its place in the UK Top 10 even after it had been made available via VOD and Blu Ray. But will the grown-ups return in sufficient numbers so we can, as Harris argues, talk about a post-Covid for films that aren’t part of a global franchise? Are the Oscars doomed to become the streaming services’ big night out?
If there was ever an industry prone to narrative it is the motion picture industry. The continuing reluctance of older moviegoers, and of the “casual” fan to attend cinema screenings, are popular stories right now. Odeon’s returns show Bond and West Side Story both out-performed with theatregoers aged 46-55, and with those aged 55 and above, when compared to the overall proportion of returners, which is perhaps unsurprising.
But numbers among these demographics are still down industry wide. Then came Belfast. It did better than outperforming among the 45-55-year-old age group relative to their overall numbers. Its returns were driven by them. It also did well among the over-55s. Maybe it just takes time. And the right film. Spider-Man’s performance would suggest that casual fans will also return for the right film. You don't produce a global gross of $1.6bn without attracting hordes of them.
Phil Clapp, CEO of the UK Cinema Association, says: “I think that, although we’d be ill advised to draw too many conclusions, Bond gave the sector confidence that audiences were willing to return for the right film.
“The results for Belfast, which was No 2 in the charts, and cleared more than £2m when it opened, were positive after a period when audiences were reluctant too.”
Clapp says while he doesn’t want to draw too many conclusions from just one film, the numbers, and the feedback, from Branagh’s semi-autobiographical story, “do give us some hope, maybe even expectation that we will see renewed engagement. In a month we should have a clearer idea if these films [the Oscar contenders] have provided a platform to return. Remember, it’s a habitual thing. Once people start going back, they go more and they broaden their horizons.”
Clapp says UKCA results show that older cinemagoers have been particularly sensitive to vaccination rates and infection numbers “which cinemas obviously can’t influence”.
“We’re not helped by government messaging of outdoors good, indoors bad. We get swept up with activities which are very different to what our sector does. In the cinema you’re sat down, you’re sitting in the same direction, you’re not talking. The vast majority are very well ventilated. There is an expectation that as news around Covid gets better it will help viewership.”
That the Covid news is getting better, for now, and Belfast’s UK performance, as distinct from its US showing, support Clapp’s contention. Branagh is not going to save cinema in the same way as Spider-Man. But he has given it a shot in the arm on these shores.
La La Land – a musical no less – was once helped in to box office la la land courtesy of an awards season boost. We are unlikely to see anything quite like that this year. But there are grounds for hope that the mid-budget outing may yet have a life, if the moneymen are prepared hold their nerve and roll the dice.
Luxford says there’s a message there for cinema operators: “You have to start giving the consumer a real choice.”
Nobody knows anything? With that quote, it seems Luxford knows something.
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